Secret Under the Stairs
by Sparker
Summary: One shot fic.....a hot guy....a mysteriouse secret....suspence and shock factor here! Read and review - i didnt know if this was worth posting!


Disclaimer: I do not own any Newsies or anything that Disney owns. I love them, yes. Do I obsess about them? Yes. Do I wish that Jack Kelly and Spot Conlon and Racetrack Higgins were real people? Most defiantly yes. But do I own them? No. *sob*  
  
Secret Under the Stairs  
  
The staircase was dusty from many years of neglect. The rickety steps were of faded oak; coated with so much grime they looked black as the scuffmarks all over the floor.  
  
Scuff marks, I supposed, from the time I was the leader of the Manhattan newsies.  
  
I had come back today to the old Lodging House, walking around in my three- piece suit, soaking up the memories. But I had also come to retrieve my secret, the thing I had kept hidden under the stairs all these years.  
  
No one knew about my hiding place. If they had found the crevice under the third step from the bottom, my life would have been over. I would have been thrown out, ridiculed, banished forever from the life of a newsie.  
  
My friends would have looked at me in disgust. "Jack Kelly." They would have said in derision. "We'se all thought ya was a big guy, so smart. Well, look what we'se found out." I shudder at the very thought.  
  
I licked my fingers and knelt down in front of the steps. Sliding my fingers under the third step from the bottom, I felt the spring and smiled. It was just like old time, still here after so long, still working after fifteen years of disuse. The top of the stair popped open and I stared into the crevice.  
  
My secret was still there, safe and sound.  
  
I rubbed my hands together, than raked my right through my dark blond hair, no longer the light sun-kissed shade it had been when I was 17, leader of the Manhattan newsies, "Cowboy" to my friends and enemies alike.  
  
What should I do with it?  
  
I looked around the empty LH common room through deep hazel eyes. Kloppman's desk was still there, the broken tables and chairs still crowded around the small pot-belied stove that kept us newsies warm in the harsh New York winters. It was silent, empty, no longer ringing with the quaint slang of the "woikin boys of New Yawk."  
  
All my old friends had grown up and moved away, as I had a year after the strike. David was a stockbroker now, Race a casino owner; Mush a restaurateur somewhere on the East Side. Even Spot Conlon had gown up and settled down, starting a family and running his father-in-laws diamond business with great success.  
  
And I...I lived alone. I did not have a wife or girlfriend. I had many friends, but I always ended up alone at night, sleeping solo in my large feather bed. I was a very rich man now, and the name Jack Kelly echoed through the business district now instead of the streets.  
  
And still my secret remained hidden.  
  
There it was, right in front of me. Staring up at me as if to say, "Come on, Jack. You know you want me. Pick me up and take me home with you."  
  
How could I?  
  
I wanted it badly, yes. So badly I felt an ache in me whenever I thought about not having it with me. It was what kept me alive during the strike....fueled my passions enough to keep going.  
  
All these years, it was impossible to even think about retrieving it. But now the time was right, and I was still having doubts.  
  
I wished I were still young, and innocent.  
  
I knew now the implications of what this meant.  
  
The time was now to get rid of my secret.  
  
But I still hesitated, my hand hovering over the dark hole. Should I? Shouldn't I? Should I just leave it here, to stay for all eternity, or until the next person found it and wondered what it was, and who had left it there?  
  
The questions never stopped.  
  
But I had to make a decision soon.....I had a meeting in less than an hour.  
  
I still could not decide.  
  
The minutes on my watched ticked away as I debated. My anxiety grew. And still I could not bring myself to take it out of the third step from the bottom, close the stair and walk away.  
  
It would be like sealing the last part of my childhood.  
  
Finally, I reached out a trembling hand to remove my secret.  
  
The faded picture was still torn at the edge, just like I remembered. The coating of dust was so thick that I had to wipe it away to reveal the man posing.  
  
Joseph Pulitzer's lean naked body gleamed in the worn print, his face looking up at me, much younger than at the time of the strike. I flipped the picture to read the familiar inscription on the back.  
  
"To Andrea Sullivan, may we have many more nights together like the one we enjoyed tonight. January 16, 1882." Exactly nine months before my birthday. My parents, the Sullivan's, had been married, even then.  
  
But this man was my birth father. My hand tightened its grasp on the old sepia photo.  
  
God, did I hate him. Even now, fifteen years after my face had first appeared in a paper.  
  
I felt the familiar pain in my chest that this image always brought on. I wanted to keep the picture, have it with me always, to let it continue to bring the anger on that I harbored deep in my heart, with no way to express.  
  
But this time, faced with reality and the whispers of the past, I knew what I had to do.  
  
I took out my silver lighter and watched as the flame licked the torn corner.  
  
Dropping my burning secret on the floor, I walked out of the Lodging House, never to come back.  
  
And the empty room whispered goodbye to me, the dark choking smoke filling the air, as the last remnant of Cowboy....of the strike....of doubts and betrayal.....fast turned to soft, gray ashes.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ok, guys, tell me what you think.  
  
This was written in a moment of serious impulsiveness.  
  
I'm going for the shock value here, so if you were shocked, tell me about it! If not, still tell me about it!  
  
Review!! 


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